RENOIR & LOVE
The National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, London WC2N 5DN
3 October 2026 – 31 January 2027
@nationalgallery
REVIEW by KATHLEEN BONDAR
With loans from private collections and museums worldwide (in partnership with the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), The National Gallery is hosting over 50 works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) during his early decades as an artist. Whilst the works of Renoir may be overly familiar, many of the paintings in this exhibition are new to viewers in London and the UK.
And, as the title indicates, the exhibition focuses on the master’s fascination with love. However, it is love in all its aspects that concerns the younger Renoir. Family, friends, courtship and socialising pervade his work. It is the human connection, relaxing and enjoying company that is thematic.
Unsurprisingly, as an iconic piece, The Umbrellas (1881-6) takes centre stage in a room devoted to sociability in the streets of Paris. The rainy scene envelops the women under their elegant parapluies. To paraphrase, Renoir said sociability is to social interaction as art is to nature. The boulevard became a place of liberation, particularly for women promenading (albeit with a companion, not alone).
Mother Antony’s Tavern (1886) shows a group of friends finishing a meal. Claimed as the first depiction in fine art of graffiti (with scribbles across the walls), it features British impressionist Alfred Sisley. Accompanied by bird sounds and church bells, a gallery room entitled “Fetes Galantes” celebrates romantic encounters in natural settings. At Renoir’s Home, Rue Saint-Georges (1876) shows male sociability, with Renoir’s friend Camille Pissarro - a rare painting of just men in Renoir’s oeuvre.
Renoir’s work was seen as rather frivolous because he diverged from other contemporaries who were concerned with alienation, particularly among the working classes. And yet Renoir was from a working-class background, and his concerns were to do with working-class life. Renoir called himself a workman among painters.
He decided to portray ordinary people enjoying life, not suffering. As the son of a tailor and dressmaker he portrays lovely young women enjoying each other’s company in At the Milliner’s (1878). Certainly, Renoir rejected rumours that milliners were downtrodden sex workers.
Non- aristocratic people enjoying each other’s company is extended in Dance at the Moulin de la Galette (1876). Dance in the Country (1883) portrays Renoir’s wife Aline Charigot as a subject. Dance at Bougival (1883) shows ordinary people happily dancing in public. Similarly, Box at the Theatre - At a Concert (1880) and At the Theatre - La Premiere Sortie (1876-7) brings popular enjoyment of the theatre to canvas.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir: Spring (The Conversation) 1876; Luncheon (Le Déjeuner) 1875; Dance at the Moulin de la Galette 1876
Ironically, the British artist James McNeill Whistler recommended Renoir visit Italy instead of England and so began Renoir’s love affair with the works of the Renaissance Masters. The intimate painting of Renoir’s wife breastfeeding their first son, Motherhood (1885) signified a change in the artist’s style. Light becomes crisper and more classical as he distances himself from the spontaneity of Impressionism. Motherhood shows Aline Charigot nursing their first son in a pose reminiscent of a Renaissance “Madonna and Child” painting. Renoir believed he could give Raphael a run for his money and, pertinently, the exhibition ends with a strong contender, The Great Bathers (1884 -87).
